Last Chance For Salvation
by ckret2
Summary: Thoughts move fast when Death is near, and time slows to give the doomed a last glimpse of his life. In Voldemort's final seconds, he is forced to come to terms with his own mortality, and gets one more shot at his own redemption. [DH spoilers. Oneshot.]


A/N: Deathly Hallows spoilers, duh. Voldemort-sympathetic, because he's tied for my favorite character. (Unfortunately for him, he's sharing that spot with Kreacher, but that's neither here nor there.) This is not an AU, as I tried to have it fit in with canon as much as possible.

Please review! Critique is very welcome, as I would like to improve as a writer, and the style I've used in this fic is a bit of an experiment for me.

Disclaimer: Honestly now, do I look like Rowling? ... Okay, there's no way you could know that. You'll just have to take my word for it, then. I don't own Harry Potter.

xxx

"_Remorse. You've got to really feel what you've done. ... Apparently the pain of it can destroy you. I can't see Voldemort attempting it somehow, can you?_"

**Last Chance For Salvation**

"_Before you try to kill me, I'd advise you think about what you've done... Think, and try for some remorse, Riddle... It's your one last chance, it's all you've got left... I've seen what you'll be otherwise... Be a man... try... Try for some remorse..._"

x

There was a moment, a fraction of a moment, when Voldemort felt, more keenly than he had ever felt anything in his life, more powerfully than the rage and hatred and self-righteous fury that had fueled him his entire life – when Voldemort felt something he had never felt before.

There was the slightest of instants when Voldemort felt, with perfect clarity, the assurance that he was _about to die_. The feeling – the knowledge – the base human instinct, whatever it was, destroyed every other thought and emotion inside him, briefly killing him on the inside before the spell that was to destroy his body ever touched him.

The instant of realization froze everything, slowing it down in his mind's eye so that it was as if his retinas had taken a photograph of the scene in front of him, freezing it inside him so perfectly that he would be able to recall the image with absolutely accurate detail even if he lived another thousand years – which, of course, he would not. He saw his own hand, cold and white and grasping the Deathstick even though he knew that the wand had betrayed him, that the weapon in his hand was the instrument of his own end. He saw the golden lights of the mingling spells before him, _Avada Kedavra_ and _Expelliarmus_, and even though the spells had yet to progress to their inevitable end, he knew without a doubt who would be the victim of the Killing Curse. It wasn't going to be Potter.

He saw, past the light of the spells, the brilliant green eyes of the boy. If he focused, he could see through the lights, and make out Harry Potter's hair, the thin lines of his glasses frames, the outline of his face... The scar that had linked the two of them together was completely hidden. Voldemort had never imagined that such a look could cross Potter's face as the one he wore now, half grimace and half triumphant smile, a perfect blend of loathing and euphoria. It was a look that had settled upon Voldemort's face many times before, but never Potter's.

No moment lasts forever, and neither does any single feeling. Voldemort's sudden instinct, warning him of his own mortality, had hardly hollowed out his thoughts when a new emotion poured into the gaping cavity left behind: terror. It was not an emotion he was unfamiliar with, but it was one that he had repressed so many times that whenever it broke through the dam he had placed it behind, it was as cold, as alien as the first time he had felt it.

Tom Marvolo Riddle, Lord Voldemort, You-Know-Who and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, who had taken such painstaking measures to ensure his own everlastingness, _was going to die_. He hadn't made any mistakes, he was _so sure_ he'd been careful, assured that every possible measure had been taken to keep his immortal soul within the mortal realm. Not a single mistake, except...

No. His mind raced, flying through every action he could recall over his past decades of existence; his life literally flashed before his eyes in his last moment, looking for where he had gone wrong. No, he hadn't made a mistake with Potter. Everything that had happened had been unforeseeable. He couldn't have done anything differently to prevent this. He'd simply been destined to die, the same as every other wizard and Muggle, pureblood and mudblood and half-blood, and all the shades of gray in between. There had never been any other options; there had never been a way to escape Death.

Voldemort had no choice but to come to terms with his death, because it never could have ended any other way.

The brain functions at speeds that lightning can only lust after, never mind a simple spell that's been slowed down in mid-flight by a collision with another spell. Though Voldemort's death was rushing at him faster than he could blink, it was hardly a slow-motion explosion to his mind.

He had time to see Harry Potter's face thousands upon thousands of times, to see the revulsion and elation over and over again. It was wrong. All these years, Voldemort had thought of the boy as the exact opposite of himself. Potter the good, Voldemort the Dark; Potter the blood traitor, Voldemort the blood purifier; Potter the persecuted, Voldemort the persecutor; Potter without a sin on his head, Voldemort with endless blood on his hands.

That was where this was wrong. Harry Potter wasn't supposed to _kill_, he wasn't supposed to _hate_ anyone the way Voldemort could hate. When Voldemort lay out destruction upon the world, Potter wasn't supposed to help by destroying another life, he was supposed to try to reverse the damage that Voldemort caused. Here, he was doing the opposite, willingly – gladly – killing someone else. It didn't matter that Potter was doing it because, for him to win, he needed Voldemort to die; it simply wasn't right. He was killing. He was doing the exact same thing that Voldemort did.

Now, Potter used Dark Arts; Potter purified the world; Potter persecuted; Potter had blood on his hands. In Voldemort's amoral eyes, he and Harry Potter had become one and the same.

_That was my mistake_, he thought, a thought that repeated itself, _my mistake my mistake_ until the first curse had time to hit him, _Expelliarmus_. The Deathstick, the Wand of Destiny – what appropriate names! – arced in slow motion out if his hands and away, towards Potter.

His mistake _had_ been with Potter, after all, but it hadn't been in failing to kill him; it had been in trying to start with. Something had been upset, something about the way the world was supposed to be had fallen apart. Potter wasn't supposed to be like Voldemort, he was supposed to be the exact reverse, because how could they fight like this? How could they stand at opposite ends of a battlefield and try to kill each other if they weren't at opposite ends after all?

Harry Potter's hand reached up and grasped the Wand of Destiny as it fell, and in trying to catch the wand his attention had been momentarily diverted from Voldemort's death; the hate stopped glinting out of his eyes, leaving them empty.

He had become a killer, and it was Voldemort's fault things had gone this wrong. Because Potter was never supposed to feel...

A memory, another piece of his life flashing before his soon-to-be-dying eyes. A few minutes of weakness when the dam that held back everything he didn't want to feel had broken, and Tom Riddle had curled up on his bed in the orphanage and wondered why no one had ever come to take him away, why his father hadn't wanted to keep him and his mother hadn't wanted to live for him. Back when his only solace had been his magic tricks, used to fight back the world that wanted to break him in pieces, and he'd fought so hard that he forgot what he was fighting against and instead learned to glory in his own power.

Voldemort felt nothing for that child so many years ago, no twinge of pity for what he had been. It was what he was supposed to be.

But it was not what Potter was supposed to become, parentless and loveless. The world had an order, and that order demanded that Harry Potter grow up happy and wanted. Voldemort had upset the order.

Voldemort had taken away what the boy had deserved. He had been wrong to ever hurt him.

He had been wrong to hurt.

Harry looked away from the wand and into Voldemort's eyes one last time before he died. As _Avada Kedavra_ filled his view, his final thought was that he hoped the damage he'd done could be reversed, that the order could be restored. That Harry, despite everything that had happened, would grow up be happy someday. That the world, despite the mistakes Voldemort had made, would still become what it was supposed to be. That Voldemort could be forgiven for these mistakes.

In his dying thoughts, Tom Marvolo Riddle wished he could take back everything he'd ever done to harm anyone. The pain of the Killing Curse was overwhelmed and drowned by the agonizing tidal wave of remorse that burst past the dam in his mind; he regretted _everything_.

With the dull shock of the curse destroying his body, and the excruciating pain of his own grief tearing at the remains of his soul, Lord Voldemort died at Harry Potter's hand.

Something somewhere else let out a small keen of agony. An unwanted child, abandoned shreds of a soul that had been underappreciated by its owner and utilized as a common tool. It suffered alone in some place that was not the mortal world, yet it was not to be admitted in its current state to the immortal hereafter. The child was an unwilling martyr, representing all the things that humanity was never meant to meddle with.

It keened again, feeling as the rest of itself fell apart in the mortal world. It knew that soon the final piece of soul that it was missing would return to it. A complete set of incomplete pieces, hardly worth the effort of reuniting. The child, struggling to breath, to preserve itself, twisted away from having to accept this final piece. Without its last ties to the mortal world, it would simply cease to be.

It couldn't escape itself forever; the final piece found its place within the wretched child. At last, the soul was complete, and without any sort of salvation waiting for it, it would vanish...

Only it didn't. This final piece latched onto the whole with the ferocity of a lost boy returning to his mother, knowing he'd been bad to run away and feeling sorry, truly _sorry_ for what he'd done.

The torn soul was knitted neatly back together, healed. The child stopped gasping and sobbing and thrashing; its lungs filled easily for the first time in decades, for the first time since it had been torn apart to begin with. It unscrewed its teary eyes and looked upwards, without pain, into the purgatory where it had been trapped.

Tom was whole again.

He stood up, looked around, knowing that this wasn't where anyone wanted to go but nevertheless feeling as though, comparatively speaking, this purgatory wasn't a very terrible place. But he wasn't alone for long.

From the white nothingness around him came a figure, robed in purple, with a long white beard and sharp blue eyes that seemed almost as startled to see Tom as Tom was to see him.

He couldn't speak, a lost soul that had only come back to life a moment earlier. All he could do was hope the man understood how he felt, how much he regretted how he'd lived.

But then Dumbledore smiled at Tom, and spread his arms in a gesture that said _welcome back_. He understood, as he always had.

The child ran to him, smiling, relieved, forgiven. Together, Albus Dumbledore and Tom Riddle walked out of purgatory, to go to the place beyond forever.

x

"_I, who have gone further than anyone along the path that leads to immortality. You know my goal – to conquer death._"

"_The true master does not seek to run away from Death. He accepts that he must die, and understands that there are far, far worse things in the living world than dying._"

x

"_Try for some remorse..._"

xxx


End file.
